Selena Gomez calls Instagram “one of my most difficult relationships,” despite being the most-followed person on the app

For the last two years, Selena Gomez has been the most-followed person on Instagram. With 133 million followers, she’s clearly doing something right, and yet, Gomez says she has a “complex relationship with Instagram, to say the least.” She loves that it gives her a space to share her “truth” but regrets the hold it has over young people and how it can create a false narrative of “what’s important.”
Gomez was interviewed by 13 Reasons Why star Katherine Langford for Harper’s Bazaar, and as with most of her interviews, she was honest, transparent, and willing to get real on nearly any subject.
Langford called Gomez the “queen of Insta” and asked her how she navigates her public and private lives.
“I have a complex relationship with Instagram, to say the least,” Gomez replied. “It has given me a voice amid all the noise of people trying to narrate my life for me and allows me to say, ‘Hey, I’m gonna post this, and this is gonna take care of the 1,200 stories that people think are interesting but actually aren’t, and aren’t even true.’ So it empowers me in that way because it’s my words and my voice and my truth.”
However, this is where her relationship with Instagram treads into “complex” territory:
"The only thing that worries me is how much value people our age place on social media," Gomez said. "It’s an incredible platform, but in a lot of ways it’s given young people, myself included, a false representation of what’s important. So, yeah, it’s a complex relationship. Probably one of my most difficult relationships.
Gomez also spoke candidly about her struggle with anxiety and depression, calling it a “battle I’m gonna have to face for the rest of my life,” which we can only imagine is exacerbated by the pressure to post images of a perfect, filtered life on social media. Judging by this interview, it seems that Gomez has the insight and awareness to navigate any potentially complex relationship in her life, regardless whether those relationships are with an app, a person, or her own mental health.